Archive for March, 2007

Posted on Mar 31st, 2007

After reading the newest ebook published by Nathan Anderson, I was floored at how it easy it was to generate great search engine results without paying a guru an outrageous sum of money to do so.  The search engines are accessible to everyone because of this new look at search engine optimization. Nathan Anderson takes the time to write down to earth explanations that any beginner can grasp and apply immediately. His writing style makes the technical jargon used by many technology nerds palatable to the amateur user.

Nathan clearly defines what a content site is and how it works. He also goes into detail about the components that make up a content site. I especially enjoyed this quote from the books opening letter. “Many SEOs are quite proud of their content creation abilities, claiming it to be an “art”. They call it “SEO Copywriting” in order to make themselves feel more important than they are… when in fact, any monkey that knows English can perform nearly on-par with these “experts.”

This comment says a lot about Anderson and the kind of person he is. The sheer simplicity of the seven clearly outlined components of a content site is indeed the work of monkeys. Thanks to Nathan’s lack of egotism and his new ebook we can all share in better search results. Nathan holds nothing back as he goes into on-page and off-page optimization factors. Anderson reveals twelve points that any SEO would charge thousands of dollars to reveal.

Just when you thought that the book was worth every minute spent signing up to his exclusive opt-in list, Nathan goes on to reveal the seven components of a content site as in a very well defined and easy to understand writing method. This portion of his new ebook clearly explains that the following seven components are general characteristics of a content site.

1. Houses primarily HTML Text

2. Includes elements of interaction

3. May include multiple media types

4. Grows over time

5. Is tightly themed (niched)

6. Takes advantage of personal passions

7. Community = Success

Anderson goes on to explain every characteristic in great detail to ensures that the reader knows exactly how to compile, combine, and complete a site that embodies “the art” of a true content site. The simplicity of every single component is emphasized with examples and clear explanations.

Nathan goes as far as to give a list of resources and tools that is unmatched anywhere on the net. He goes into the programs and tools he uses personally to construct his own content sites. It was a true pleasure to read this ebook and use the tips and techniques Nathan has given to the world. The ebook is free at artofthecontentsite.com. Take a minute download it and start living your dreams.

This article and one-way link advertisement provided by LinkAcquire.com

Art of the Content Site by Nathan Anderson Shows that better search results are attainable by anyone.

David C Skul - CEO LinkAcquire.com and Relativity, Inc. is pleased to serve his clients through traffic generating articles and one way links.

Posted on Mar 31st, 2007

Everyday, the Search Engines average 300 MILLION searches. In a recent Forrester Research report 81% of consumers on the Internet find products and services by using the Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization allows you to achieve top search engine placement and a tap into a new source of qualified visitors who are actively searching for products and services on the Internet.

Unfortunately, only 7% of all websites are visible by the search engines according to a recent StatMarket.com study. The reason for this phenomenon is because most web sites are not properly optimized and promoted to achieve high search engine rankings.

The Top 3 Components Of Optimizing Your Web Site for Top Search Engine Rankings:

To achieve the best overall, long-term search engine positioning, three components must be present on your web site:

1. Content component (Your web page text.)

2. Link component (How you link your pages together.)

3. Link Popularity component (The in-bound links to your site.)

1) The Content Component

The most important part of the content component (of a search engine algorithm) is keyword selection and where you place keywords on your web pages. In order for your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your web pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search queries. Finding these keywords that your target audience uses to find your product is accomplished by conducting keyword research.

2) The Link Component - Internal Linking

The strategy of placing keyword-rich text on your web pages is useless if the search engine spiders have no way of finding that text. The way your web pages are linked to each other has huge impact on your site’s search engine positioning. Be sure to link your pages together with your keywords within your links.

3) The Link Popularity Component - Acquiring In-Bound Links

The "Link Popularity" or Google "Page Rank" (PR) component of a search engine algorithm analyzes how many web sites link to your website.

95% of the battle of getting high rankings at the search engine is acquiring quality and relevant links pointing to your web site. Ever since Google entered the search engine market, all the major Search Engines have started using links as the primary way they rank web sites. This is known as your web site’s "Link Popularity" or in Google’s case it’s called "PageRank" or "PR."

For example, the heart of Google’s algorithm is PageRank, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. Here is what Google says about their "PageRank" web site ranking algorithm at their web site http://www.google.com/technology/…

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

As Google explains, Links and PageRank are critical to ranking high in the search engines. In fact, inbound links and the text within those inbound links account for 95% of effective search engine optimization.

Relevant Links: But, attaining optimal link popularity is not as easy as simply obtaining as many links as possible to your website. The quality and relevancy of the sites linking to your site holds more "weight" than the quantity of sites linking to your site. Since Yahoo is the most frequently visited site on the web, a link from Yahoo to your website carries far more "weight" than a link from a smaller, less visited site.

Here’s what Google Developer Matt Cutts has to say about links…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Thematic incoming links from authority sites
carry more weight than on-page optimization."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Top 4 Strategies for Acquiring Links to Your Web Site:

Below are the four critical steps for achieving high rankings by acquiring text links to your web site…

1) Get a higher Google PageRank score than your competition For any given keyword, there is a minimum PageRank required to rank at Google. In order to see what this minimum PageRank number is, search Google for your keyword and look at the PageRank of your competition’s web sites that are ranked in the top 10 of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). An easy way to view the PageRank scores of your competition is to use Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com or the SEOChat PageRank Search tool. http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/

2) Get more relevant links than your competition All links are not created equal. The best links are "relevant" links from web pages related to your keyword.

3) Get more links on more different web sites than your competition Getting links on a variety of different web sites on different networks is crucial for high rankings.

4) Use the keywords you want to high rankings in the search engines as the anchor text of your in-bound links. "Anchor text" is the visible text within a hyperlink. Text links and anchor text are the two most important criteria for how Google and other top Search Engines rank web sites.

Here is an example of a link containing the keyword phrase "ERP Software" within the anchor text…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
F*R*E*E [ERP Software] white paper shows how
to increase profitability and reduce inventory.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relevant Links and PageRank are critical to achieving high search engine rankings. Want proof? Do a search at Google for the highly competitive keyword "computers" and you’ll find Apple and Dell computers rank numbers 1 and 2 in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Now, click through to the Apple and Dell web pages and look for the word "computers" in their web page text. What did you find? Neither www.apple.com or www.dell.com have the word "computers" in their text, yet they’re ranking #1 and #2 at Google.

Relevant Links and PageRank Win!

The sites with the most relevant links and highest Google PageRank win every time and rank the highest at the top search engines. There are many methods you can use to acquire text links including buying links from a broker, Internet directories, reciprocal linking, Internet publicity, and others.

Matt Hockin is President of Interactive Marketing, Inc., an Internet marketing consulting company providing web site optimization and search engine marketing services that "tune up" web sites for increased conversion rates, traffic, qualified leads, and profitability. For more information, visit http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com

Posted on Mar 31st, 2007

When I first began attempting to make money on the internet, I fell into the trap of advertising my website with "get rich quick" promoters and products, thinking I’d get my money back immediately with their allegedly wonderful services. After wasting hundreds of dollars on marketing, I decided to take another route: I tried pay-per-click search engines and other conventional-but-expensive means of generating traffic.

I never really saw any conrete results, but I continued plugging away. I talked to business owners, researched different methods, and spent even more money… until I found a few methods that worked for me and have consistantly worked to give my websites exposure. I wrote this article to give readers like you the opportunity to skip the learning curve and move to where I am now. This article will dispell the biggest misconception about marketing and will also give you information about the most effective method to build your online business.

The most common misconception about Internet marketing is that you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to get traffic to your website and a steady stream of customers buying your products. This isn’t true. Pay-per-click search engines have their merits and e-commerce marketing companies can sometimes be effective, but they can also be very expensive, often driving you too far into debt to recover before you see any profits. This is precisely why less than 3% of people who begin Internet businesses actually ever see a return on their investment. In this article, I will explain why this isn’t necessary–and how you can skip this learning phase and begin using inexpensive and free tools to begin putting money in your pocket immediately.

While there are many free and inexpensive methods to effectively market your business and put money into your pocket, I am going to focus on the absolute best, fastest, most profitable, and most recommended method among “gurus” and Internet millionaires: creating your own ezine.

You can begin today by signing up with an autoresponding email address, where you can send opt-in subscribers to be added to your mailing list. I would suggest using http://www.getresponse.com because it can handle the biggest loads. You can open an account for free, but I would suggest eventually upgrading to a PRO membership. This autoresponder is by far the most effective Internet marketing tool and after you see how it works, you will want to reap its full potential.

After you take some time to explore and understand your getresponse account, you can begin writing the first article of your ezine. Take some time to review your site and your products. Make sure your ezine article properly reflects what you’re marketing–and make sure you have at least one link to every product you talk about in the issue. Give some general advice, but use persuasive sales language. Entice your potential customers, but do not stretch the truth too much; you want to gain as many TARGETED subscribers as possible. Remember: these people are opting-in to your mailing list because they WANT TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS. When you have finished your first article, load it into your getresponse account.

Now you are ready to begin marketing your ezine. The best and fastest method of gaining subscribers in my opinion is starting a campaign at http://www.leadfactory.com. Leadfactory will work with you on a pay-per-subscriber basis to help you create a mailing list of PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS. If you work with Leadfactory, make absolute certain that the ad for your ezine and product is 100% accurate. Remember: you’re paying for subscribers, so you want ones that want to buy your products. I personally would suggest buying subscribers from Leadfactory to begin with, but if you want to go the completely free route, you can begin by signing up for the free trial version of Push Button Leads at http://www.pushbuttonleads.com. You can use this product for free for two weeks and then decide whether or not the amount of subscribers you get is worth the $20/mo. fee.

You are now ready to begin increasing the your ezine’s exposure. This requires MASSIVE ACTION and a lot of patience. You can begin by creating a boilerplate ad for your ezine that includes information about your products. Make the ad only a paragraph long and use some persuasive sales language. You will then need to submit your ezine to ezine directories and ezine announcement lists. You can begin by going to google and typing in “ezine directories.” Begin submitting your subscription information (whateveryournameis@getresponse.com) along with your ad and any other information the site asks for. Do this to as many ezine directories as you can find. I would suggest submitting to a minimum of 50. This will seriously increase your exposure by putting your ad on all of the top ezine directories on google.

Next, go to Yahoo.com and sign up for an account if you don’t have one already. Use Yahoo to find ezine announcement lists and promotion groups. Yahoo has about 100 of these groups on their website and some of them have a significant amount of subscribers. To sign up for these groups, send a blank email to the group email list or the group admin. You should immediately receive an email back, asking you to subscribe. Subscribe to them - and do this to as many promotional lists and groups as you can find. Once you’re in the group, post your ad along with the address of your ezine whateveryournameis@getresponse.com and the address of your site (if they allow it). This technique can win you between 50-500 subscribers each week. Make sure you use it to your advantage by signing up for as many group as possible.

At this point, you have gone further than most internet business owners ever get. Take some time off, relax, and watch your mailing list fill up with subscribers.

Make sure you continue to send out new ezine issues every week or every other week to let your customers know you’ve got new deals on your website.

Isaiah Hull publishes Work At Home Right Now, a fresh and informative newsletter about making money on the internet and using proven methods to increase your site’s traffic and profitability. If you’re looking for time-saving and money-saving tools, as well as honest business advice, come by and subscribe at http://www.workathomerightnow.net

Posted on Mar 30th, 2007

Oftentimes, the most important facets of SEO are overlooked, even by webmasters and seasoned SEO experts. Why? Because somehow all the emphasis gets put on the importance of keywords, leaving all other SEO elements in the dust.

Equally important aspects of SEO include:

1. Reciprocal Link Exchange (Linking Strategy)

2. Page Rank

3. Avoiding getting penalized by the Search Engines, and more importantly, avoiding getting banned.

I am an online business owner and SEO specialist. I have seen people put emphasis on the wrong things, to the detriment of equally important elements.

So, how can you build a website that is completely optimized and that attracts thousands of visitors each month? One way is to simply analyze the websites of your competitors. Sound confusing? It’s not, once you really understand the concept of not "reinventing the wheel". If you follow this philosophy, you can parlay the success (read: copy) of websites that are already successful into your own online success.

Your first step is to completely automate the SEO process. This means choosing an SEO software tool that will let you analyze all of the important SEO information of your competitor’s sites - Reciprocal Link Exchanges, PageRank, Search Engine Ranking and Reciprocal Links. This way, you can quickly and easily see exactly what your competitors are doing to be ranked as well as they are. A good automated SEO tool will give you a step-by- step process, that you can follow for any website you set up, to ensure your success. Best of all, that formula will have been proven to work because your successful competitors are already using it!

In addition to all of this, a good SEO tool will help you to avoid being penalized and even banned by the Search Engines.

Consider the following:

1. You can be penalized by linking to websites that have been penalized and even banned by the search engines.

2. You have to keep track of all the websites that you are linking to manually to avoid having this happen to you.

3. You need to know who your link partners are linking to; they may be linked with a site that has been penalized or even banned by the Search Engines, which could lead to your getting penalized or banned as well.

Automating your SEO process will make all of the above not only easier, but quicker as well, since you will no longer have to search through and keep track of thousands of websites manually.

Joe Borges makes it easy to get your website optimized and listed in all the major search engines. Learn how to automate your SEO Process for online business success by visiting: http://www.tekretail.com/bestseo.html

Joe Borges is an experienced Internet Marketer and Software Consultant with experience in website development and implementation. He is also a professional SEO Consultant, helping internet businesses increase their web presence, website traffic and Search Engine Ranking. Get essential tips, tools and strategies that you can use right now to make your online business thrive by visiting our Internet Marketing Services website.

Posted on Mar 30th, 2007

Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning By Dave Davies, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc.

There are two main advantages to non-reciprocal links as opposed to reciprocal links. The first is that these links will hold more weight, as they aren’t reciprocated (the search engines can detect whether links are reciprocal). The second advantage is that they don’t have to be monitored as closely as reciprocal links. With reciprocal links one has to be aware of unethical webmasters who will take links down or use other tactics to insure that the search engines don’t see the links pages. You have to be aware of these events so that you can remove their links from your site if warranted however with non-reciprocal links you don’t have to be as concerned as you’re not linking to them.

These are far from the only benefits of non-reciprocal link building but they are two of the most beneficial for your site and for you as its webmaster. But how do you get something for nothing? Why would someone want to link to you in exchange for no links back? Keep in mind the acronym TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). In short, you’re not going to get something for nothing but it’s well worth the "something" you’ll have to put in.

So non-reciprocal links are beneficial to your search engine positioning campaign … but how do you do it? There are a number of tactics that will work. Here are a few of the more successful:

Write Good Content
It’s shocking but some people will actually link to your site because it is a valuable resource that their visitors may find interesting or useful. The search engines initially gave incoming links value based on the belief that sites with incoming links tended to be sites that others find worth linking to. People actually linked to sites simply because they found the content useful. Believe it or not this practice still exists today.

If you have a quality site with great content, preferably updated regularly, others in your industry should naturally link to you. It’s also appropriate to ask other webmasters to link to your site either through direct contact or by posting a page on your site, which provides images and/or link details. If you get even one link out of your efforts it was worth the 5 or so minutes it should take to put up the page.

Directory Listings
Provided that you’re willing to invest a bit of time and money, directory listings are probably the easiest way to get non-reciprocal links. Provided that you’re site has some value to it and is not offensive, most directories will list it though usually there is a "review fee" involved.

There are the well know directories such as the Yahoo! Directory however you may find that the price tag for a guaranteed review from Yahoo! at $299 to be a bit more than you wanted to spend for a single listing. Another "major player" in the directory world is the Open Directory Project (or DMOZ) however you may find that with volunteer editors, your site can take many months to get listed, if at all.

Fortunately there are many "secondary" directories and there are also literally thousands of topic-specific directories that can provide valuable listings. In fact, topic-specific directory listings can in many ways be considered more valuable in that the link to your site is entirely relevant and also, you should get some quality targeted traffic from your listing provided that the directory itself ranks well.

How much you should pay for a specific listing is debatable depending on the industry, the value of the link, etc. however topical directory listings are usually somewhere around $30-$100/yr in the majority of cases. If your link will be placed on a page with a good PageRank and will fewer than 50 or so other sites it is worth considering.

Article Submissions
As you’re reading this article you should certainly be able to infer that I personally am a fan of writing articles as a form of non-reciprocal link building. Articles provide perhaps the best of all worlds in that they provide valuable and entirely relevant links and also can be a great source of targeted traffic.

That said, articles are also the most time consuming of link building efforts. One must consider the time it takes to write the article, find sites to publish it and also the submission of the articles to all these sites. As a tip, when you find sites you wish to submit your article to add them to a folder in your "Favorites" (or "Bookmarks" for those of us using Firefox). If you decide to publish more articles in the future (and you probably will) it’s certainly helpful to start with a list of the places you’re submitting to rather than having to find them all again down the road.

When you’re writing your article there are a few considerations that you should make. One of the biggest benefits of articles as a link building measure is that the links are relevant in that they are about the topic of your site. Why not insure that your titles and content are written such that they add further weight for your targeted keywords. If you look at the title of this article "Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning" you’ll notice that the phrase "search engine positioning" (our main targeted phrase) is present. Additionally the phrase is repeated periodically in the content area. This will add relevancy to this article and our targeted phrase. If you look in the credits below you’ll notice that the anchor text linking to our site is "Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning" (assuming that the site on which you are reading this article allowed for HTML submissions otherwise the link should simply be the http format). This will add additional relevancy tying that phrase to our site.

Because the Beanstalk website is still in the sandbox on Google it is unable to rank for this highly competitive phrase however you may notice that currently the #11 ranking page is one of our articles. This alone should demonstrate that these articles can pick up relevancy. Once Beanstalk is out of the sandbox on Google we will have many highly relevancy links that are strong enough to rank #11 on their own. You can do the same provided that you treat writing your articles the same as your content. It must contain your targeted keywords and it must read well.

Additionally, you are going to want to search for many related websites to submit to. You can visit the search engines themselves to find related sites (in our case we would run a search such as "search engine positioning articles submit") or you can use a program like PR Prowler to find the links and also insure a minimum PageRank on the sites you are submitting to.

If you decide to publish more than one article I would further recommend that you add to your list with each submission. Take a few minutes before you submit and find an additional 5+ sites to submit your articles to. You’ll find your link popularity and rankings will reward you for it.

Summary
Of course there are many additional tactics you can use to get non-reciprocal links including paid links, press releases, etc. however those noted above are the ones which will produce the most consistently over time and while they can be time consuming, are well worth the effort.

I wish you the very best of luck in developing your non-reciprocal links and in increasing your search engine positioning. It will take time; it will take energy; but done right it will be very rewarding.

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines. To keep informed about what going on in the SEO world you may also want to visit the newly created SEO blog on the Beanstalk website.

Posted on Mar 30th, 2007

Keeping it clean could give you a boost.
By Mark White

Everyone is striving to be at the top of the

pile, we all want to get a better google PR and want this

to reflect in more visitors to our site. But after we have

followed all the advice about keyword placement and alt

tags is there anything else we can do?

I recently asked Tinu Abayomi-Paul the well

respected google expert from freetrafficdirectory.com

if having tidy html coding helped.

She told me that although there is no absolute proof that

it helped she had noticed that site’s with good xhtml

code often seemed to get a higher ranking .

It is my belief that when the spiders visit they prefer

a clean house.

So how do you know if your pages are up to

scratch and up to search engine standards? There are a couple

of sites that you can visit and get your pages spring cleaned

for free so it’s worth a visit.

The first site is site

valet and this is in my humble opinion the most useful

as they use an online version of html tidy , the program

was originated by Dave Raggett and now at Source

forge and it offers to tidy your pages straight off

your hard drive, did I mention the word free, yes this valuable

resource is free.

The big bonus for me is that if Tinu is correct then this

site can convert from html to xhtml, what a bonus it could

be to raise my google PR at the same time as making my code

better. The online report gives you a not to complicated

list of warnings about missing tags, attributes and offers

advice about what you could add or change for people with

non graphical browsers.

The magic is that site valet gives you your page code back

in tidy form, just copy and paste the code for a spotless

site. As well as tidy the site offers the more rigorous

but more technical page tidy so if you know exactly what

you want and are a techie then the page tidy option is for

you.

The other site is net

mechanic.com and is incredibly useful, they offer a

free limited look at your site and offer advice similar

to site valet. You can get a report for up to 5 pages of

your site free and they offer other resources for you to

try such as image optimisation programs, online link checking

and browser compatibility checks.

The cost of a years membership to sort out your site is

really good value and well worth it if you have a larger

site as the tools could save you weeks of work over a year.

If you use the full resources available to

you on both of these site then you should end up with very

clean precise code that has the engines all in a tizzy over

your level of code hygiene, they may even reward you with

a better rank.

About the author.

Mark white has built and run 3 sites for the last 4 years,

has worked in I.T. for 15 years and is

actively involved in traffic/search engine related sites.

His sites are

$10

dollar downloads.com

sunspeks.com

and phone-bits.com

Please feel free to reproduce this article

ensuring all content and links are left intact.

Posted on Mar 29th, 2007

It is time to look at those SEO questions from the folks who need help and guidance. Let take a read of some of the Dear SEO Drama Queen email which floods her box every day…..this is a Prozac moment about to happen in the SEO world.

Dear SEO Drama Queen

I want a number one ranking for my web site. The keywords are clothes, sneakers and hats. I read so much out there on how important it is to be on Google. Can you promise me a #1 ranking for my 3 keywords?

Thanks
BA

Greetings BA Of course I can guarantee #1 ranking’s on Google for those very generic keywords that compete against missions of other sites. AN SEO who couldn’t isn’t worth their wait in gold. It is easy. First, I need you to purchase about 100,000 shares of Google stock. Once you are a major holder, we can then bribe Google to either place you on top or we will sell their stock to Yahoo.

Let me know when you have made the purchase
Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen
I contacted an SEO company and they stated their fees are $300 a month for 6 months. They stated they needed to access my site, make changes to code, write content, and help me decide on keyword phrases, build link shares and on and on. I think this is a rip-off as I have seen SEO for $25 a month and they do not need to work on my site or have me make changes, they just submit the site to 1000’s of engines. Should I go with the less expensive company?

Thanks
ST

Greetings ST
Cheaper is always better. Why should actually do anything to your web site. Do not use your valuable time on making your site better when you can have someone do everything for $25 bucks. I mean, why should you suffer, it is only your business, so do not put in the effort if someone can do it cheap. Let’s face it, your $25 bucks pays for them to spend a minute of time placing your URL in an auto program and pressing a button. Sure, 1000’s of engines no one sees, and sure, just because Yahoo, MSN and Google need you to manually place in a code before excepting, and sure, even though your site doesn’t even need to be submitted in most cases, why pay for an expert when you can go cheap and get the site submitted. Heck, save the $25 bucks, let the engines find you on their own and go to the movies instead.

Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen

I wanted to make fast money online. I joined a program that build my site and even provides me with products to sell, submits my site and stated the money would be coming in. I selected mattresses, even though I know nothing about them, but they promised I could make $1000 a month with just a few sales. I paid they fee, went into the online builder and selected my site template, pressed some buttons and now have a site. But I cannot be found at all….even when I search by my domain name.

HELP!
ZK

Dear ZK

Oh my! You mean they lied to you? Shame on them. You take the time to select a product you nothing about, pick a web template you believe looks good and expect the money to be rolling in. Heck, they even promised to submit the site to the engines. Sure, maybe the site is not deigned to be search engine friendly. Sure, your site is held deep in their subdirectories with all the other ‘want to get rich quick’ clients, sure, you never need to do another thing to promote the site….and yet you still cannot be found. I am shocked, appalled even. But surely, they would not lie to you. Maybe you should buy more sites from them for other products you know nothing about and maybe one day, you will get found and make a sale.

Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen

After much reading and searching, I found an SEO company that has a good standing in the SEO world. They were expensive, but promised to deliever. I paid the fees and the process began. But, I was expected to work on the site as well. I was expected to provide keyword rich content or actually pay them to write content for my site. I was expected to even make my site easier to read by engines, change navigation schemes and work on marketing lingo and something they called ‘site stickyness’ Why am I paying them when I feel like I do all the work. This must be wrong and I am getting ripped off? I have seen other SEO companies that say I do not need to make any changes and they will add 100’s of pages to my site that promise top rankings. What should I do?

Worried
LM

Dear LM
Get your money back now. How dare this SEO Company expect you to actually work with them on making your site more SEO ready? I mean it is your site, you should have some say in it, and if you do not want to make changes that will help the SEO achieve their goals…well then do not. Go with that other SEO Company. Let them add 100’s of hidden pages to the site. That way, in 3-6 months when Google realizes what has been done, any rankings achieved will be dropped…but do not worry, you will have 3-6 months of great placements and make lots of money. Then you can remove those bad pages, send an apology letter to Google and repeat the process again. I am sure that will be just perfect. Do not follow that other SEO Company as they expect you to work with them in a team effort, and as we know, there is no ‘I” in team

Best
SEO Drama Queen

My Dear Readers: Oy VEY…what I must put up with. Let us just remember, when you hire an SEO Consultant, be sure they know the facts and have the proof to backup what they say. SEO is a team effort. Your SEO consultant will request you make changes, will help make changes and will become a member of your team. 65% of people who hire an SEO do not follow their advice and thus, can meet with failer. Remember this, there is more to SEO then just adding a tag here, a word there, a link and so on. It takes time and hard work, but when done right, can provide you with wonderful success. I should know…after all, I am the SEO Queen!

Bonnie Burns is Director of SEO for http://www.GuaranteedTopRankings.com GuaranteedTopRankings.com has been in the SEO/SEM business for 6 years, serving clients big and small and delivering top rankings.

Posted on Mar 29th, 2007

Attaining a top ranking in Goggle or any other major search engine nowadays is a herculean task indeed. But webmasters are archieving this enviable position continuously. The common thing about many of these top sites is that they have plenty of good content and quality one way inbound links.

These are the two most important elements in search engine optimization today. Content and quality links are the most difficult aspects of present day SEO. I guess that is why the major search engines have adopted these two elements of SEO as a must for top ranking. They are right of course. Content is what the search engines crave and quality one way inbound links is what makes a site an authority site for a particular keyword.

CONTENT:

Providing quality content at your website is not an easy task. It involves research, coming up with good ideas always, visiting forums and discussion groups to know what the latest trend is and so on. There are so many ways to come up with great ideas to write on. Some of these are;

1. Visit discussion forums and learn what problems people are seeking solutions for.

2. Browse other relevant sites and see what other webmasters are doing. This could give you creative sparks.

3. Subscribe to quality newsletter that give the latest trends, tools and resources in your line of business.

How to create content for the search engines..

The easiest way to creating content for your site is through publishing other people’s Articles. You can setup your site to receive and automatically publish articles after reviewing them. The trick here is to go for very good, useful and quality articles. Once your site becomes known for quality articles, visitors will keep coming back for more.

However, the downside is that a visitor reading a good article would want to click to the author’s site. Another disadvantage is that most times articles are not written for good search engine optimization. Important SEO techniques like keyword Density, keywords in headings etc may not be taken into consideration by the author.

Another way to easily create content is to hire a ghost writer. You pay a certain amount to have somebody write articles for you. You can find good writers at elance.com

Using a blog to create content.

One way to continuously provide content for your site is by using a blog. In your blog you can link to the rest of your site. The blog could be part of your site. For example, http://www.ebizstartups.com/my-business-tips.html. That is the URL of my blog. I have links to the main site from my blog this ensures that the search engines visit my blog and the main site quite often because the blog is updated often with content and if you have a new product you want to introduce at your site, start from your blog and link to the product page. Updating your blog frequently with new content ensures the search engines visit often. Once the frequent updating trend is set you will find that the search engine spiders will visit even when you stopped updating for a while.

ONE WAY INBOUND LINKS.

How do you get these one way inbound links? This is the million dollar question. For an in depth strategy for acquiring these type of link go my site at http://www.ebizstartups.com and download a free PDF version of the report. If you can generate these type of link you are on your way to the top of the major search engines. But wait a minute. Is it just to generate links to your site? If it is just that, it’s easy.

Write articles and submit to article submission sites. At the bottom of your article or your resource box you are allowed to put in a link to your site using the URL of your site. But what good will that do you? It will bring you traffic okay. But that is as long as you keep writing those articles. Once you stop the traffic stops. However, the links you acquire through articles using your site’s URL may only increase your site’s link popularity but not link reputation.

While link popularity is the amount of links that point to your site link reputation is the amount of links that point to your site with your keywords in the anchor text. Search engines use this anchor text link carrying keyword to judge your link reputation and determine whether your site is an authority site for that keyword. Understand all that? No? okay let’s look at it in another way. If all the links pointing to your site have the text a s the URL of your site. Unless somebody searches using the exact URL of you site your site will never be found. And people do not conduct searches using URL like www.ebizstartups.com but if the other site pointing their links to your site with the link text having for example "link popularity" then you are on your way to the top for that keyword.

The author, Salihu Ibrahim, has several good articles to his credit. Examples are, "Google adwords made easy" and "How to acquire one way inbound links". These and other articles could be found at his site at http://www.ebistartups.com. He is also the owner of http://www.autoresponders4all.com which provides completely free autoresponders for webmnasters.

Posted on Mar 29th, 2007

Benefits of Website Localization

Maximising profit today involves reaching beyond national markets. Accessing an international customer base is vital if a business wants to expand and participate in international trade.

‘Localization’ relates to the act of modifying a product to make it both usable and suitable to a target market. Website localization therefore refers to the process of taking an English, western-orientated, website and moulding it to conform to a foreign audience.

The World Wide Web, as its name suggests, is a means by which businesses can reach an international audience. Companies are now recognising that a key step in successfully approaching and selling to international customers is through website localization.

Website localization brings with it numerous benefits. The three main benefits of localization are:

Website localization crosses language barriers

32% of internet users around the world are non-native English speakers. With PC ownership and access to the internet most rapidly increasing outside of North America and Europe, this figure will increase even more. Website localization breaks linguistic barriers and opens doors to other continents.

Companies are now waking up to the fact that English is no longer ‘the’ international language but one of many including French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. With the number of companies now realising the benefits of website localization, there are more pages in foreign languages than ever before. This means if your company’s site has not undergone the localization process yet, it will be playing catch up in the future.

Website localization builds credibility

If your company only has a site in English and your competitor in all major languages, which one will gain more credibility? Localization of your website demonstrates that you are a truly international player. In addition, through localization it shows that you understand, value and have respect for that particular country or region.

Website localization increases revenue

Billions of dollars, pounds and francs in potential revenue are lost each year due to lack of investment in website localization. Most internet users will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language. By undergoing the website localization process you access potentially millions of new customers.

It is clear that website localization is a must for any truly international business. In addition to the technical and programming elements of website localization many cultural factors must be borne in mind.

For example, has language been translated properly and cultural variations in terminology, phrases, metaphors and sayings been taken into consideration? Have symbols, graphics, pictures, colours and general layout been viewed for their cultural applicability?

Website localization is a huge investment and should not be viewed as a straightforward process. When localizing your site, ensure you get the expertise of both a website designer and a cross cultural communications consultancy to ensure your site has maximum impact on the target audience.

Neil Payne is Director of cross cultural communications consultancy http://www.kwintessential.co.uk

Permission is granted to reproduce the article in full on the condition I am made aware of any intention to use it. npayne@kwintessential.co.uk

 

Posted on Mar 28th, 2007

Today’s topic is going to cover a favorite subject of mine, search engines. I am naming this one How to Dominate the Rankings.

Must be asking, what in the world makes you an expert on dominating the rankings? What’s your credentials. Your right, I have none and I’m no expert. I’m not sure how to dominate anything but my monkey. It’s a joke people, just jokes. What I do know is some of my sites are at the top of the rankings and new websites I am working on are rising everyday.

Ok Ok, enough already. I think you get the point. I may not be an expert, but I have somewhat of an understanding of how to rank on the 1st or 2nd page. Sooooo. Do I have your attention now. Goood!

How do you get your site to the top of the rankings for your keywords. No one really knows the true answer as the search engine world is very complicated. However there are things that you can do to take your website from a site that only you (and maybe some friends) know about to thousands of people knowing.

There are 2 factors that you want to consider in your search engine optimization. They are called.

On-page optimization
Off-page optimization.

Just from the wording you can probably take a good guess at what they are. So I’m not going to go into it. You take it from here. Good luck.. . .

Nah, I’m kidding. Let’s talk about On-page. On-page optimization is factors that you change on your page. Off-page is factors on other people’s websites. What’s more important you may ask? Both are important, but off-page is more important than on-page. Back in the hay day of the internet, on-page ruled. But due to spammers and cheats, on-page became less important but still holds some revelance. So make sure you get it right.

Today’s post is going to focus on on-page for right now. Like my momma always told me, "make sure your backyard is clean before you worry about someone else’s" I never understood that when I was young. But it sounded good. I do now though. Anyway, back to the subject. What are factors that you can change on-page to help your rankings. Several. Let’s talk about a few here.

I think one of the most important ones to change is your Title. Really!! Yes really. You should come up with a good clean title to your website. Not just any Title. The Title of all titles. Your title should be readable to users, such as you and me, but contain YOUR keywords that you want to focus on. Let’s look at this in more detail.

The Onla Adult Entertainment Site’s title is Adult Entertainment Online. Remember above our keywords that we are ranking high with.

To name a few

1. adult entertainment
2. entertainment online
3. adult entertainment online

Ooooohhhh. Is it making sense now! Notice anything between the keywords we have and the Title of the page?

Alright now on to the next factor meta description and meta keywords. Thing to note: With Google, meta keywords mean nothing. It does not consider it. But most of the others do, so it’s good to have in there just in case. I try to optimize my sites for all the SE’s, not just one. Word of caution here. Do not go crazy with the keyword. You do not need to put every instance of the keyword or keyphrase in your meta. For instance if your keyphrase is going to be baby momma. You do not need to stuff it with baby momma daddy uncle sister cousin best friend mom. Just put a few key pharses, around 15-20 is a good number to target.

Your meta description should touch on your keywords as well. After that, next you want to do is make sure your keywords or phrases appear in your content of your page. Bold or underline one or two just to add importance to it. A side trick that some seo experts say to do is add h1 and h2 tags. Some even go as far as adding h3 or h4 tags. These are called header tags. You add them into your code. Myself personally, I only go up to h2.

If your website is full of pictures and banners, search engines cannot see them. Change the alt text of the banner or picture. The alt text is the text that is viewed if a user puts his/her mouse over it. It appears in a little box. Search engines can see that. Put some of your keywords in there. Again, do not spam. I trick I do to not appear to spam is put the keyphrase or keyword and end it with banner or image or picture. For example, keyword baby momma and I have a picture on the site. I would put the alt text for picture to be baby momma picture 1.

There are more things to do in which we can speak on it later. What I can tell you is to put your keyword in the search and find the website that is ranking number #1 and copy what they do. Their number #1 for a reason right? So duplicate the format and you should get similiar results.

Let’s talk about a few things not to do. These will get you banned or penalized.

1. Do not make the keywords or phrases the same color as the background. So to the user, they never see, but the Search engines will. They do not like it and it’s consider spammed. If your site does not have the content to fit the keywords and you cannot get creative enough to mix it in so it flows, change up your keywords. Focus on some that you can make flow. But do not do that trick. It’s an old trick and SE’s are smarter than that. They will know that it’s being done and ban you. If your site is doing this now, this is probably why your not ranking well.

2. Keyword spam. This is just repeating the same keyword over and over and over again in your title, meta description and through your page. Again another no no. This will get your site banned from the SE. They see this as spam.

In summary, as I always state in my post, focus on your content. Overall that is the best advice. Set your page up right and focus on the content and the rest should fall in place. With most SE’s, when your webpage optimized, it’s a waiting game. A little known fact is most websites, probably in the high 80 percentile are not optimized at all to rank well. Your well optimized website will stand out to SE’s and move up. Just stay focused on your content. Change up your content regularly, say once every 2-3 weeks, monthly at the worse. This is a good thing as the SE’s will see your site as important and keep checking back due to the updated content.

We will get into Off-page on another post. I think it needs to be talked about separately. Right now I will let you guys run so you can get working on optimizing your websites.

Feel free to share your seo tactics with everyone. Happy optimizing.

John Cal
Adult Entertainment
Work at Home Based Business Ebooks

SEO Expert. Own and operate several high pageranking sites and top 10 positions with the SE’s.

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